Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) (40 page)

“Dispatch, Ozma’s lab please. Nix? I’m down in the Pit, and I need you to bring me the Wishing Pill now.”

“
Really?
Are you sure?
”

“Yes.”

While I waited, I carefully cleaned the scorched bits of wreck from Shelly’s sphere. Was she dreaming in there? Waiting patiently in the silent black for input leads to restore her senses? Counting against an internal clock and watching her power die? She couldn’t know I had to wipe tears off her chromed shell.

The doors slid open and Nix buzzed in. She clutched the marble-sized silver pill in her tiny hands, and flying close she dropped it in my open palm.

“Thank you.”

She nodded, wide eyed, and flew back to perch on a free-standing drill or scope or widget that couldn’t do anything useful right now.

The bigger the wish, the bigger the test
, Ozma had said. Fixing a broken bone? Not much. Moving from one place to another? Probably even less. A chest full of gold? More, but probably manageable. Restoring a shattered, scattered body? Who knew? Ozma couldn’t do it.

She didn’t have Shell.

I swallowed the pill.

As big as it was, I almost choked but managed to force it down and it sat, cold in my stomach. I closed my eyes. Shelly alive. Shelly kicking the playground bully for me. Shelly laughing after skinning her knee doing a stupid somersault off a tree. Shelly planning our evening excursion to The Fortress to see the superheroes party. Shelly poring over superhero costume sketches, playing with Gray, yelling at Toby for being a jerk. I wished for Shelly as the cold pill in my stomach warmed, heated, turned to fire, turned to lightning, turned to boiling fusion that radiated up through my chest, out through my arms and legs. I wished for Shelly as my eyeballs boiled and my skin caught fire. I wished for Shelly as I screamed. I wished for Shelly.

“Hope? Hope, stop it!” Someone shook me, and I opened eyes I couldn’t believe I still had. My throat burned, absolutely raw, and I wanted to vomit endlessly.

Nix crouched on my chest, crying, the widget she’d perched on a smashed wreck against the far wall. Except for my throat, the unbelievable pain was gone like a nightmare — I’d shattered my cast, but my shoulder felt like my fight with Dozer had happened weeks ago. Vulcan stared down at me.
Of course, he wouldn’t have left the Pit.
He didn’t let go until my frozen lungs unlocked and my stomach unclenched so I could inhale. I couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to come back in and grab me; strength back, I could have taken his head off without realizing it thrashing around.

I wanted to cry with Nix. My powers were back, but it hadn’t worked. I hadn’t been strong enough. Shelly was —

“Hope?”

Vulcan yelped as I sat up so fast I knocked him on his ass. Nix tumbled into my lap.

Shelly sat on the edge of the work table, wearing a blue denim miniskirt and white t-shirt with sparkly blue print that read
I killed myself origin chasing and all I got was this stupid t-shirt
. She swiped strands of wild red hair away from her face, stopped, grabbed her left hand in her right and squeezed her palm, eyes widening. Her head twisted around as if she was searching for something invisible, whipped back to me.

“Hope? Oh my God, Hope, what did you
do
?”

The moment of empowerment instantiated by a breakthrough presents the new superhuman with an immediate existential crisis, and this crisis remains long after the purely physical crisis which triggered the breakthrough is past. Granted life by her gift, small or great, how will she use what she has been given? Why does she have it? This “Why?” is a theological question for some, but atheists face it as well — indeed, the question is simply a more urgent form of the defining human question.

Dr. Alice Mendel,
Breakthroughs and
the Crisis of Being
.

It’s a good thing I’m more rugged and durable than I used to be — as it is I pretty much violated any warranty that might have been issued with my powers.
Don’t boil water you’re swimming in
had to be at the top of any list of Things Not To Do, but my natural heat resistance plus what Andrew built into my costume kept me from cooking; so instead I almost drowned before Safire fished me out.

My explosion hadn’t been all heat; I’d thrown out enough concussive force to turn the boats left in Monroe Harbor into toothpicks
and
light them on fire. Safire flew me back to the Dome over the overgrown wreckage of Grant Park, and I didn’t see any green moving — good thing since I was so emptied out I probably couldn’t have pulled up a fart, forget about blastworthy action. The Green Man hadn’t got past the CPD’s fireline to Michigan Avenue, but everything from the lake shore to the line lay buried in green trees and vines — they’d climbed halfway up the Dome and the Atlas Memorial was just
gone
.

“Cleanup will be a complete bitch,” Safire laughed, looking down. She held me in her arms like a baby and the woman did not wear push-ups; I felt like I was being smothered in latex-packed marshmallows.

Say something, you moron.

“Not my job, really.”

“Nope,” she agreed cheerfully. “It’s the Crew’s, and I can help, and Watchman and Astra — when her powers come back, poor kid. Lake Shore and Columbus are forestland now, but this is nothing like the Big One last January...there we go!” The roof opened over the Dome’s launch bay and she dropped us in, through the bay, and down the shaft to Dispatch. We popped out onto the Dispatch floor under the big screens, and she swung me to my feet.

“Here you go, sugar! Gotta go clear some traffic, it’s nuts. And congrats.”

“Huh?” Real smart, but I was talking to myself — she was already gone, leaving me dripping on the carpet. So, what now?
Congrats?
That’s when the clapping started. David stood up from behind his console and put his hands together hard as I stared around, and one by one every dispatcher, at every station, rose until the whole room had joined his applause.

What?

Grendel

How can you tell if a doll is
dead
? Lack of a pulse? I tucked Nox back under my vest and turned myself around, but the fight was over out in the equipment bay. Groaning orange suits lay all around and there were no spheres left in the air. The place smelled of ozone, probably from Lei Zi; the rest of the team had to have hit the scrum like an avalanche after I bulldozed through.

Lei Zi didn’t even ask what was behind door number one, or wasn’t anymore; Chakra had to be whispering into her brain like she had with me. She just tasked me with looming while they zip-tied or Sandman-drugged or otherwise restrained all the orange suits still moving. Moving
carefully
; I growled a few times, flying on frustrated adrenaline and ready to play, but nobody in orange moved too energetically. A few minutes into the cleanup at least half the orange suits, the skinny bald clones, freaking
disappeared
and nobody else blinked. I wasn’t going to open my mouth to ask.

Then the red flashing lights died and our Dispatch connections came back.

“
We can stand down, everyone
,” Blackstone reported. “
The DSA team has been able to wrest control of the prison security system from Phreak, and between ourselves and the Detroit Guardians, we hold the prison. Good job, everybody
.”

I dialed my fangs back as hatches opened and guards who’d been locked out of the blocks by the hijacked system flooded in.
Good job, my ass
. The Bad Guys had been bugging out when we got here — if I’d gone right for Drop first... But I hadn’t seen him, had I?

And what did Pellegrini want with
kids
? At least Nox had tagged the son of a bitch — there’d been blood all over the little razor he’d pulled, and I hoped he’d scarred the mass-murdering bastard. I’d consider it a promise of things to come, monster to maker, and if Nox woke up I was going to buy him a harem of dolls. Or not, but I owed the little psycho a debt, and —

Across the room, Lei Zi clapped her hands for everyone’s attention. Three words,
The Green Man
, and we were headed out as fast as we came in.

Astra

I’d never seen Dr. Beth
not
smiling before, even if it was only the “everything will be fine” smile the best doctors kept for scared patients. He wasn’t smiling now.

Shelly kept closing her eyes, blinking, biting and licking her lips, feeling her arms and shifting her position on the examination table. Tremors shook her body every few minutes. Dr. Beth had cleared everyone else out of the infirmary, but for all she noticed me I might as well not have been there. Her hand was cold when I took it, and she jumped when he gently peeled a sensor from her shoulder.

“Well, Shelly, Hope has continued her custom of bringing me people who are suddenly breathing.” He watched her like she was the deepest mystery he’d ever seen. She probably was.

“Twice isn’t a custom,” I protested weakly when Shell didn’t say anything. I was starting to get scared.

“Perhaps, but I eagerly await the next occasion. Shelly, you are a perfectly healthy sixteen-year-old girl. I take it this is not welcome?”

“I can’t
see
,” she whispered, blinking. “I can’t hear anything.”

“That’s not — ” I started, but Dr. Beth snapped his fingers beside her head. She flinched.

“I imagine you feel you can’t,” he said kindly. “Your robot eyes could see into the infrared spectrum, like Hope’s. And you could hear into the ultrasonic range. And all your links are gone, yes?” He tapped his forehead.

She nodded.

“And the rest?”

She slipped her hand from mine to hug herself. “I’m
naked
. I feel
everything
.” A tear tracked down her face. “I’m stuck and I — ” A convulsive breath brought another tremor. Dr. Beth nodded.

“Your world is suddenly very small and you feel every point where it touches you.”

“Yes!” She swallowed. “I can taste my
mouth
.”

“Everyone can, you’ve simply forgotten how to ignore it. But you’ll remember. I prescribe rest, for now, and a quiet place with not much happening. Hope?”

I nodded and took her elbow. She slid off the table and came with me easily enough, and I wanted to scream.

I turned the indirect lighting in my rooms up as bright as I could as Shelly stretched out on my bed and tried not to move. She didn’t react when I carefully sank down to sit on the end by her feet. I counted heartbeats, the most beautiful sound in the world, and remembered the day I first heard Jacky’s. Father Nolan would draw some interesting observation from my having witnessed two resurrections. Except in both cases they hadn’t been
dead
— just differently alive.

“You used the Wishing Pill, didn’t you?” Shell whispered.

I nodded.

“Why couldn’t you have just wished me
fixed
?”

I shook my head but kept my mouth shut.

“Why?”

“Because you can’t wish for something you don’t want. Not a true wish.” She looked away, but since I’d started I had to finish. “I wished for you, Shell. Not you in a robot body or in my head or in a secret future computer CPU somewhere. I wished for you. I’m so, so sorry.”

She wiped her eyes, sniffed. “My
nose
is running. God, I hate this.” Sobs convulsed her like hiccups, and she folded in on herself. When I touched her ankle, she rolled over to my side and I pulled her into my arms.

“SuperPooh’s around here somewhere if you want him,” I whispered into her hair, and she laughed wetly.

“Cheater. That’s not fair.”

“
Really?” the Shelly standing at the foot of the bed asked. “‘Cause I could use him right now.”

I screamed and almost crushed Shelly. “Sorry! Sorry!” I loosened my grip.

“What?” Shelly gasped.

I stared at the new Shelly. “You can’t see her?”

“See
who
?”

“You! How — Oh.
Oh
.” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

“What?
What
?”

I glared at virtual Shelly. “Your quantum-mirror backup just arrived.”